Ian Caws
The Ballad of Albert Trott
or how a shot was fired on the eve of the Great War but did not make the conversation
I was about to speak of one
who scribbled out his will
on a laundry ticket, knowing he’d pull
the trigger and his clothes remain
uncollected. I was going
to mention how he left
four pounds in cash, a wardrobe and the draught
from an open window, saying
too, that his landlady was named
sole beneficiary.
But I stayed silent, you being cheery
and in a mood for old, well thumbed
humour. I nearly did tell you
how he was the one man
who’d hit a six over the pavilion
at Lord’s but, in the end, failed to
spot the right moment. What I saw
was the dropped revolver
in his lodgings at Willesden, saw it there,
the man who came over the sea
beside it. The rumpled old yarns
I found later, somewhere
outside my head, and told them to the air,
the silence where it all returns.
who scribbled out his will
on a laundry ticket, knowing he’d pull
the trigger and his clothes remain
uncollected. I was going
to mention how he left
four pounds in cash, a wardrobe and the draught
from an open window, saying
too, that his landlady was named
sole beneficiary.
But I stayed silent, you being cheery
and in a mood for old, well thumbed
humour. I nearly did tell you
how he was the one man
who’d hit a six over the pavilion
at Lord’s but, in the end, failed to
spot the right moment. What I saw
was the dropped revolver
in his lodgings at Willesden, saw it there,
the man who came over the sea
beside it. The rumpled old yarns
I found later, somewhere
outside my head, and told them to the air,
the silence where it all returns.
Page(s) 30
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